After The End Comes

They are coming to get us out.

Milo says he can hear them; I think he’s lying, but I agree anyway.

It is stifling hot; my shirt sticks sweatily to my back, and we are out of water.

They said to be prepared for three days: we have been here for nearly seven, and the rations started running low on day two.

I am so thirsty, I cannot even allow myself to think about it.

The group is quiet, apart from the occasional slurp and swallow from a water bottle. Everyone is saving their energy for what is to come.

A crackling, buzzing sound comes from the speaker hanging low over our heads. Then a robotic, stilted voice.

“Warning,” it says.

Milo reaches for my hand, and I hold it, even though I feel like my skin is going to peel off from the heat, and the last thing I feel like doing is touching someone. From the corner of my eye I see him glance up at me. He’s twelve, but in the last few days has reverted to seeking reassurance from me like he used to.

But I’m just as clueless as the rest. I think he knows this, but in the current situation is choosing to forget.

“You will be evacuated in the next two hours. Please follow the directions you have been provided with to the permanent bunker. You will need to walk slowly and carry a torch at all times. Your estimated journey time will be three hours. You will receive further instructions on arrival at the permanent bunker. Thank you for your co-operation.”

Nobody reacts to this. We have been waiting for this moment: all we want now is to get out, assess the damage, get to the next place.

“Clara.”

Milo’s voice is almost a whisper. His hand, clammy and surprisingly small, is still stuck against mine, and I can feel his hot breath against my neck.

Look after him, Clara… please.

You’re all he’s got. Take care of him, Clara.

I wonder, for the millionth time, if Mom and Dad ever stopped to think that someone might need to take care of me.

But I guess there wasn’t much time for that. Thinking, that is. Apart from about the immediate necessities.

An impending apocalyptic event tends to focus the mind that way.

“Tell me about it again,” Milo half-croaks, half-whispers. Even listening to his voice makes my throat itch. I can hear his thirst and it is making my body feel it too. I try to clear my throat but it still feels thick and dusty, like it’s coated in sand.

I know what he is talking about, of course. We talked about nothing else for the week before we came here. Talking constantly of what would come next, where we would be going after the initial, temporary bunker.

“It’s going to be like a giant underground hotel,” I whisper back. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. Milo presses in to me. “Once we are in there, we won’t even know we are underground, not really. It will be really cool and modern looking. Like a spaceship. Every family gets their own quarters. We’ll have our own bathroom. There’s a school in there – “

“Ugh, but – “

“No buts, you will be going to school” I tell him. “They’ve got a gym down there. A basketball court. Even a movie theater and grocery stores. Although we’ll probably be eating canned foods for a while.”

“Will my friends be there?”

I don’t hesitate. It is not worth contemplating anything else.

“Yes. Of course.”

Milo sighs, leans against me and falls silent.

I rest my head against the slightly damp, concrete wall.

We will be out soon.

*

After what could be an hour, or two, or several, we are startled into a new kind of wakefulness that we have not felt for a week, by the loud creak of the door opening.

A hiss of excitement - of Something Happening – ripples through us all. I stand. We all stand.

We are a hot, writhing, stinking mass of bodies. For the first time, I try and properly look at the people around me. I guess there are around a hundred of us. All people from our neighbourhood, but I have been trying to avoid meeting anyone’s eye: not wanting to recognise anyone, or be recognised.

The door is opening slowly, and for the first time I feel afraid.

“What do you think it’s like out there?” Milo whispers.

Torch in hand, I glance down at him and do my best impression of a confident smile.

But I have no idea. They told us the journey will be three hours. Three hours of what? Digging our way through mountains of ash? Climbing over the bones of those who didn’t make it? Wading through swampy flood waters?

I don’t tell Milo, but I know that the three hours is important.

What they are not saying is: if you don’t make it in three hours, you will not make it at all.

I remember, just last week – though it feels like it may as well have been last year – sitting up after Milo had gone to bed, watching news report after news report with Dad. Discussions of ‘the first wave’ and the temporary holding bunkers to see out the storm, then the move to the permanent bunkers.

But nobody really dwelled on why. Why the rush to get to the permanent ones.

I can still hear the newsreader. Trying to remain calm, professional. But he was only human after all.

The second wave, due to follow shortly after the first subsides, is predicted to be even more catastrophic than the first. Any life forms unaffected by the first wave, will be undoubtedly wiped out by the second. At best guess, the storm is likely to last for several months, if not years, making life on the earth surface impossible.

We urge all of you who are able to get to the permanent bunkers to do so promptly. Only take essentials.

Good luck and godspeed to you all.

The silence that followed, hanging thickly in the air between Dad and I, was the worst I have ever known.

That was when I knew, I think, that Mom and Dad would not – could not - be coming.

From then on, they just kept telling me to take care of Milo.

And Mom made a mountain of sandwiches.

“Might as well use up all the bread,” she said.

*

Everything is dark.

As we fumble our way out of the shelter, we could almost kid ourselves that we are emerging into just another normal night.

The air is cool and refreshing on our pink faces.

A hundred torches light up around me, and I pull Milo back slightly, out of the crowd.

“But we have to hurry,” Milo says, his eyes bright white against the black sky.

“Just hang on a minute,” I say.

I shine the torch down and ahead of us, checking the terrain. The grass, or what remains of it, is scorched and burnt almost to the ground. Across the field, the gate we all poured ourselves through just a few days ago, is gone. Not even a ragged branch or piece of wood remains. Ahead of us, and all around us, is just… earth.

As if everything that was there has just been erased.

“OK,” I say, more to myself than anyone else. “OK.”

We start to walk, following the dark line of stumbling, slow bodies.

I try to pretend not to notice when we cross what used to be the stream, where Milo and I used to play just a few short years ago. Now it is just a dry scar running across the land.

Milo falters slightly when we cross the field, and I purposely look the other way to begin with.

But it creeps slowly into my vision: the line of battered houses just ahead of us, now just individual squares of debris.

“Don’t look,” I tell him, but even as the words come out of my mouth, I pause in my tracks and gaze across at where we lived.

I flash the torch over my wristwatch. We can still make it, especially at our pace. We are stiff from being cooped up for a week, but we are young and fit. We can afford a five minute delay, surely.

Milo follows without argument as I slip out of the human snake writhing towards its destination, and start picking my way across the tarmac road, now in pieces around our feet.

There are only five houses; ours is easy to find.

We are silent as we flash torches across what remains of our home. I cannot pull myself away yet I know I shouldn’t be here.

Part of me is relieved that all I can see are pieces of stone. Dust and bricks, the ashes of the house, all around.

“Clara.”

Milo is standing stock still, where the bay window of the living room would have been. The one with the beautiful view over the fields and the stream, with the hills cresting the horizon. Mom loves to paint there.

Loved.

I don’t want to walk over to him, but I have to. We can’t stay much longer.

It takes me a moment to see what Milo is staring at.

Just a glimmer of metal.

A wheel from Mom’s chair.

I grab Milo’s arm and pull him back, like it’s going to burn him alive.

His face is expressionless but I know the image is searing itself on his brain, that there will be many restless nights ahead where this is all he is going to be able to see.

“Milo.”

It’s my best, confident, big-sister voice. It usually works.

“There’s something in it.” He is back to whispering; I have to lean down to hear him. I place a hand on his chest – stay here, don’t follow – and step back towards the wheel.

I don’t think about what it is or where it’s from.

I pretend it’s just another piece of rubbish.

Milo is right though, there is something caught in it. Something metal.

Probably nothing, but something makes me crouch down and reach out.

It looks like a thin gold thread, wrapped around the metal; pulling it gently, Mom’s locket falls towards me, landing in my upturned palm.

It feels the same.

All those nights of watching her taking it off and asking to hold it. I know the weight perfectly. The only difference is this time it is stone cold, no longer warmed from her neck.

Fumbling with the catch, the heart shaped locket opens easily.

The tiny photos remain intact. Mom and Dad gaze out at me. Kind, lovely. Alive.

I don’t even realise I am crying until I feel Milo behind me, his arms squeezing me tightly, his face buried into my back.

“Sssh,” he says.

I should be the one looking after him.

After a moment, I feel him tugging at my arm. We need to get going.

I loop the necklace between my fingers, pressing the heart into my palm.

Milo clings to the elbow of my other arm. The torchlight ahead of us is shaky, but we find our path.

“It’s going to be like staying in a huge hotel,” Milo says, as we walk away from our destroyed life. I wipe my eyes roughly with the back of my hand.

“We’ll have our own bathroom. The rooms look so cool. It’s gonna be like living on a spaceship. There’s a movie theater and a basketball court. There are even gonna be clothes stores. It’ll be like living at the mall, Clara.”

Other than the torch, all that lies ahead of us is darkness.

“It’s going to be just fine. We’ll be there soon.”

We keep repeating the words over and over: to ourselves, to each other.

And keep walking.